An aspirant's several years search for Allah, made possible by His grace/mercy ,and not through any efforts of the seeker

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Are religions outdated?

149. Development and
critique of religious thought. Part one.

I respect all religions, but believe in none. I think that
the religions are outdated now. Moral conscience of the society has sufficiently
developed. Today is the epoch of secular humanism, which this mote believes (in
my case, with the addition of fervent love of God and to reach Him through
mysticism).

The religions arose to fulfill the needs of a particular
society at a particular time in human history.

Why did man need religion? I have written about it in
various blogs (33, 36, and 98). Let me repeat them over here.

Human beings saw a flat, stationary earth.Sun and moon rose in the East and set in the
West. Stars filled the sky. Sunlight permeated the day and the moonlight
suffused the night. Cool breeze in a hot summer day was delightful. There was a
pregnant pause at dawn and dusk, as if the whole universe was holding its
breath. There was joy in watching the children play. There were myriad plants
and animals. Rain came to nurture the harvest. Fragrant flowers attracted
butterflies. Each season came with its own delights. Beautiful snowfall in the
winter, and fragrant flowers in the spring. There were blue lagoons, winding
rivers and deep oceans. Clouds scudded the blue sky. Fish swam in the water and
birds soared in the air. Cows and horses roamed in the pastures and camels in
the deserts. Bees supplied them with honey and quadrupeds with meat and milk.
Man was filled with wonder.Everything
moved with precision. Just as a house could not develop by itself, somebody had
to make it; similarly, the world had to be made by somebody. The thought of the
grand universe making itself never came in the imagination of humans. There had
to be a creator of the universe.

Against such beauty and grandeur, there was ugliness. There
was great suffering and injustice.

Famines were common. Just few years of drought were
sufficient to cause them in ancient times. Hundreds of thousands of people would
die, including women and children. Tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes
would wipe out hundreds of villages and towns. There was the constant misery of
epidemics of smallpox, plague, malaria, cholera and many other such diseases.
Childhood sicknesses and birthing problems killed hundreds of thousands each
year. Most of the globe suffered from chronic malnourishment in the poor.

Then there were the problems created by human beings
themselves, such as poverty, wars and slavery. The dark ages had cruel kings
like Tamerlane and Genghis Khan who would construct towers of heads. Last
century had unprecedented number of deaths by the hands of Hitler, Stalin, Hutus
and Pol Pot.

The problem of misery and injustice has plagued philosophers
and religious scholars for over two thousand years. The ancient Greek
philosopher, Epicurus posed what is now called Epicurean Paradox

“God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists”

"Is God
willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able,
but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then
whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him
God?"

It
was more natural to think that sufferings could not be explained by religious
arguments, so human beings thought about it and tried to reconcile the 3 powerful observations, which were before them.
Those 3 observations were the following:

(A)Huge universe is present, and
could not have possibly arisen, on its own.

(B)There is lot of suffering

(C) People do good things and bad things.
Cruel or bad persons are not necessarily punished, in fact they may have a
great life, and the good are not necessarily rewarded.

Since it
was obvious and unalterable fact(to them) that there was a God, the need was to reconcile it
with the second observation, the suffering. The logical answer would have been that God was not such a kind entity; in
fact He appeared to be downright cruel. Even under the best circumstances He
had to be indifferent and uncaring. So the wise men convinced themselves that
there must be a life after death where justice will eventually be done. And to
explain the bad deeds in the presence of omnipotent God, the Devil (Satan) had
to be invented (bad deeds were the work of Satan and not of God). Hindu
religion used a different theory: ‘Your sufferings are due to the misdeeds done
by you in previous lives’. Oppressed people needed these dogmas, because that
way of thinking gave them strength and eased their burden in three ways: First,
because they may think that their suffering was due to God’s will, so it must be good,
since God is good. And religion taught unquestioned surrender to God. Secondly,
they may think that there may be a hidden benefit in the present calamity (
there is a silver lining in most clouds). And, through these trials, there may
be an improvement in the better part of one’s nature. Who were they to question
God’s wisdom? He knew better. Thirdly, if they were not rewarded here, then
God’s justice made it absolutely certain that they will be rewarded in the next
life.